Thursday, July 31, 2014

Staunton, July 31 – Many have been
transfixed by the size of the 50 billion US dollar judgment by the
international court in the Hague against Moscow in the YUKOS case, but the real
threat to Russia lies not from that vast sum but rather in the principle that
the international court has articulated, according to Vladimir Pastukhov.

In a commentary published by “Novaya gazeta,”
the St. Antony’s scholar argues that one needs to look beyond the number and
recognize that even if it were only one dollar, “the historic significance of
this decision would be no less and perhaps would be even greater” (novayagazeta.ru/columns/64621.html).

The decision of the Hague court
represents, he continues, “a doctrinal breakthrough,” one that reflects a
triumph of the liberal legal doctrine that Moscow partially accepted two
decades ago but has since moved away from, retreating toward the formalist
principles on the basis of which the Soviet state.

The liberal position holds that a law must be legal, that is, it
must be part of a general quest for justice and that its application is
possible only if this broader context is taken into consideration.The formalist position holds that the text of
any law must be enforced regardless of this context.

That somewhat abstract difference,
Pastukhov continues, has enormous practical consequences.The formalist position was the basis of
Stalin’s Great Terror. Regardless of why charges were being brought or how a
law was being used, if an individual was judged to have violated a particular
law’s provisions, he was guilty.

The liberal position, in contrast, argues
that the political use of a law can be the basis for deciding that its
provisions should not be applied in a particular case because that case would
not be in that case “legal” but rather “political.”

Until the YUKOS decision, the
Russian government has been successful in defending itself in cases where it is
involved by insisting on the letter of the law and rejecting any consideration
of the context in which it has been applied.Now, the Hague court has rejected that position, something that opens up
“a Pandora’s box” of problems for Russia, Pastukhov says.

Moscow had defended itself against
suits like the YUKOS one by arguing that the firm had not paid taxes and that
any other issue was irrelevant. Even when it acknowledged that there were
“numerous procedural violations,” the Russian government successfully returned
to its point that the law had been violated because the taxes had not been
paid.

The Hague arbitration court in this case,
however, “did not limit itself to a formal consideration of the facts but
viewed them in a broad legal context and as a result came to opposite
conclusions” to the ones it would have reached if it had continued to accept
Moscow’s formalist approach.

That makes the current decision
“important not just in and of itself,” Pastukhov argues. Rather, it has
“enormous importance as precedent” and changes the legal framework under which
Europe will consider Russian legal practice and thus Russia as a whole. And
that “will have consequences for Russia much more serious than the loss of 50
billion dollars.”

At least “potentially,” Pastukhov
says, “this is a much more rapid path to the organization of the complete
isolation of Russia than even sectoral or other sanctions”because it means that in any case involving
Russia, “issues of legality will be considered not formally but in terms of context
and with an account of the legal correctness of the goals pursued by the sides.”

Staunton, July 19 – The two
countries Moscow views as its closest partners, Belarus and Kazakhstan, have
refused to join its sanctions campaign against Moldova, another indication, the
editors of “Nezavisimaya gazeta” say today, that as a result of its recent
actions, “Moscow is losing its allies.”

And that in turn suggests two
things, the editors say. On the one hand, it calls into question Moscow’s brave
talk about the real existence of a customs union among the three. And on the
other, it means that Moscow needs to review and revise its policies toward
neighboring countries lest it continue to drive them away (ng.ru/editorial/2014-07-31/2_red.html).

Chisinau
officials say that they are very pleased by the decisions of Mensk and Astana
not to join the sanctions against Moldova Moscow has announced, the paper says.
They note that when Moscow imposed a wine embargo against Moldova in 2006,
Belarus ignored it and purchased Moldovan wine on a bilateral basis.

But
today, “Nezavisimaya gazeta” points out, “the situation is different.”
Supposedly, since 2010, there is a Customs Union, of which Russia, Belarus and
Kazakhstan are members, and its decisions are supposedly taken by consensus.
But on Moldova, there is no consensus; and that casts doubt on claims that the
Customs Union “exists.”

The
present case, the paper continues, “is not unique.” In April, Belarusian leader
Alyaksandr Lukashenka proposed delaying the formation of the Eurasian Economic
Union for ten years because the potential members were not “ready.”And Astana has been concerned that the
absence of Ukraine and Moldova in such an organization reduces its value to
Kazakhstan.

With
Ukraine and Moldova now oriented toward Europe, the editors say, “the
integration unions on the post-Soviet space in which Russia is participating
either have already collapsed or are at the edge of that.” The CIS is in
particular trouble. Georgia has left. Now Ukraine is doing so. And Moldova has
declared its intention to head to the exits.

But
now, as the positions of Belarus and Kazakhstan show, the Customs Union is in
trouble as well. And the paper notes that “not one of them supported Moscow
when the European Union and the United States introduced sanctions against the
Russian Federation.” As a result, Moscow’s plans for a Eurasian Economic Union
are unlikely to go forward.

This
represents a major defeat for Putin. As “Nezavisimaya gazeta” notes, “in nine
of the ten” messages of the Kremlin leader to the Federal Assembly, he has
declared that increasing cooperation among and integration with the post-Soviet
states is “a priority of the foreign policy of the country.”

Despite
these repeated declarations, the CIS is “gradually falling apart,” and any
“illusions” about that have been finally dispelled after what has been
happening in Ukraine.Given that, Moscow
needs to review its policies toward the region if it is to have any chance of
reversing this decline.

“Without
that,” the paper concludes, “Russia risks remaining a pariah on the territory
which it has traditionally considered a zone of its influence.”

Staunton, July 31 – Moscow is
directing predominantly ethnic Russian refugees from the fighting in
southeastern Ukraine into non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation in a
transparent effort to change the ethnic balance in those republics and further
Russianize them, according to Marat Kulsharipov, a historian at Bashkortostan
State University.

In an interview to RFE/RL’s
Tatar-Bashkir Service, Kulsharipov said that those who are fleeing from Eastern
Ukraine “are not sent to Rostov, Kursk Belgorod or other [predominantly]
Russian regions [which are close to Ukraine] but to Bashkortostan, which is
thousands of kilometers away” (azatliq.org/content/article/25475282.html).

Some of them, he continued, “are
being accommodated in the summer camps” of local universities. Others are
“being sent to different towns all over Bashkortostan, a Muslim Turkic republic
in the Middle Volga.That inevitably
raises the question as to “why so many of them have been sent to [the
non-Russian republics] rather than distributed equally throughout Russia.”

In his judgment, Kulsharipov said,
what is being done reflects a decision by Moscow to “change the ethnic mix” in
the non-Russian republics, boosting the number of ethnic Russians and thus
reducing the share of the titular nationalities. That is clearly part of a
broader Moscow strategy to create a single “Russian” nation.

There is another aspect to this
Moscow-arranged flow: it has created unfunded mandates and sparked new ethnic
tensions in the republics, the historian said.“The refugees get money from the republic budget, and they get housing
and jobs.” But “they’ll never take a hard and low-paying job.People who live here are insulted by that.”

The reason for the feelings of the
Bashkirs, he said, is “that this is being done [by Moscow] on purpose. If the
refugees were being sent to other regions as well, [they] wouldn’t be so
frustrated.”The Bashkirs are angry
because they view this policy as “targeting the non-Russians.” The republic
president probably understands this but “can’t say anything.”

RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service
reports that Bashkortostan is slated to receive up to 5,000 Russian refugees
from Ukraine, a number that is not huge but one that can tip the ethnic balance
were the share of the population of various nationalities is relatively evenly
balanced as in many parts of that Middle Volga republic and to a certain extent
for Bashkortostan as a whole.

The policy
Kulsharipov points to represents a continuation of Soviet practice.When members of ethnic groups have returned
from abroad, they were often settled not where they wanted but where Moscow
thought this would do the most good for its policies of maintaining control.

The most notorious of such Soviet
actions, of course, was Moscow’s decision to settle Armenians returning from
abroad after World War II in parts of the Armenian SSR and then invoking their
need for space as the basis for expelling Azerbaijanis from the region, an
action that still rankles in the southern Caucasus.

But there is an equally clear case,
albeit a negative one, of such policies elsewhere in post-Soviet Russia. Moscow
has sought to block the return of Circassians to their historical homeland in
the North Caucasus lest that shift the ethnic balance against the Russians and
undermine central control of that restive region.

Staunton, July 31 – The census in
Crimea that the Russian occupation authorities plan to conduct in October will
be extremely detailed but may not be accurate because Moscow experts have
already indicated that they believe that there are far more Russians in Crimea and
far fewer Crimean Tatars than have been counted hitherto.

Such suggestions, made most
prominently by Academician Valery Tishkov, a former Russian Federation
nationalities minister and director of the Institute of Ethnology and
Anthropology, almost certainly will be treated by Crimean officials as a
mandate to come back with figures showing precisely that.

And those Crimean officials will be
able to do so because the census they plan will be based as most censuses are
not on documents but rather on declarations and these declarations, which may
be extremely varied, will be grouped by those who process the census information
according to their own rules.

Moreover, it seems very likely that
just as many Russian speakers in Ukraine shifted their declared national
identity from Russian to Ukrainian after the Soviet Union disintegrated, many
of this group will now reverse themselves in Crimea, believing that the
annexation will be permanent and that declaring oneself a Russian in that case
is more beneficial.

The statistical agency said that
census takers will not require documentary confirmation for any of the declarations,
that it will include foreigners resident in Crimea (although it did not
indicate how they would be counted or grouped), and that it will focus in particular
on those from abroad who have come to Crimea to work or study.

Each of these elements introduces
additional possibilities for falsification and obtaining the results that the
Russian authorities want.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Staunton, July 30 – Vladimir Putin
has eliminated elections at the regional levels at least in part to ensure that
nationalist parties do not have the opportunity to challenge his hand-picked
party of power officials. But some nationalist groups are using elections at
the city level to advance their cause.

The majority of the planks are
typical “good government” programs: a call for a greener and cleaner city,
better road repairs, more transparent city planning, elimination of traffic jams, a better port and yachting
harbor, increased security on trains and trucks carrying dangerous cargo
through the city, and more assistance to young people, pensioners, and
invalids.

But two of the planks have what some might view as a “national” or even “nationalist”
dimension: preservation of the city’s historical center by excluding commercial
development there and “broadening of international ties both by sister city
programs and via municipal organizations from other countries.”

By including these planks in the campaign of its candidates to a city
council, the Republic Movement of Karelia which seeks greater autonomy from
Moscow is remaining true to its core principles albeit with the restrictions
that Putin’s regime has imposed. And it is thus laying the groundwork for a
more ambitious promotion of its ideas when that becomes possible.

Staunton, July 30 – This year, the Russian
Orthodox Day of the Baptism of Rus coincided with Muslim holiday of Uraza
Bayram. On Monday, in what many will see as symbolic, Moscow’s churches, with
the exception of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, were largely empty, while
the streets around the capital’s five mosques were filled with Muslims.

In a commentary for the religious
affairs site, Portal-Credo.ru, Feliks Shvedovsky says that this picture “would
be funny if it were not so sad” and if it were not the case that this is “nothing
new but on the contrary typical” of the situation in the Russian capital, all
the talk about the return of Orthodox notwithstanding (portal-credo.ru/site/?act=comment&id=2085).

The Union of Muftis of Russia has
been emboldened by this to renew its request that the Moscow authorities
reverse themselves and allow the construction of at least one mosque in each of
the ten administrative divisions of the city, something Mayor Sobyanin has said
he will not do because of the reaction of Muscovites.

At the same time, of course,
Sobyanin has gone alone with the Russian Orthodox Church’s plans to build 200
new churches in the Russian capital, even though there have been at least as
many protests about what such construction projects will do to parks,
neighborhoods and traffic patterns as there have been about the possible
building of mosques.

But, feeling themselves increasingly
numerous and thus strong, Shvedovsky says, many Muslims in Moscow are now
joking at least among themselves about “the fate of numerous Orthodox churches
in Constantinople, which is now called Istanbul,” after the Muslims took over that
city and made it the capital of the caliphate …

Unfortunately, the Russian religious
commentator says, Moscow officials are nonetheless unlike to accede to the Muslim
requests but rather adopt what he calls “a ‘Crimean’ scenario,” in which,
instead of optimizing what already exists, “the authorities will unite new
territories” under the control of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow
Patriarchate.”

Moreover, they will invest ever greater
funds “into propaganda of ‘Orthodox-patriotic values’ which have nothing in
common with faith and spiritual live” and not oppose “the further demonization
of the image of Islam at the day to day level.” That reflects a judgment by those far above
Sobyanin’s pay grade that they can re-ignite Islamophobia after Ukraine.

Within the Russian Orthodox Church,
one might have expected believers and hierarchs to be most concerned by the
passing of Metropolitan Vladimir who had been the head of the Ukrainian
Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. But instead, it appears, most were
upset that Patriarch Kirill hadn’t been able to travel to Kyiv for this
anniversary.

As a result, Shvedovsky says, the
center for the celebration of the anniversary of the Baptism of Rus had to take
place in Moscow where “it immediately became obvious that this is already
almost a Muslim city and that the chimeras of ‘the Russian world’ haven’t
existed since Crimea was taken from fraternal Christians.”

“Nature” in this as in all things “abhors
a vacuum,” the commentator says, “and in place of a transparent chimera” of the
Russian Orthodoxy offered by the Moscow Patriarchate was the Moscow Muslim
community including gastarbeiters which is now vital and full of energy.That is a contrast few in the Russian
government or the Patriarchate can be comfortable with.

Staunton, July 30 –Some Russian nationalists
are already looking beyond the defeat of the militants in eastern Ukraine by
the Ukrainian military and arguing that “even if the revolt in Novorossiya is
suppressed, Ukraine will no longer exist,” an assessment now less about pushing
Moscow to intervene than about trying to put the best face on a defeat.

In an article on the Russian
nationalist Forum-MSK.org today, Maksim Kalashnikov adds that “even if a time
of troubles begins in the Russian Federation, Ukraine will not survive” in
anything like what either Ukrainians or Russians expect and that “it is
possible now to speak about ‘the former Ukraine’” (forum-msk.org/material/fpolitic/10444579.html).

Ukrainians may think they are winning,
Kalashnikov says, but “what will happen next?” The answer, he says, is a
disaster. The IMF will impose serious requirements on Kyiv in exchange for
loans. Those will lead to the closing of enterprises “the south-east of the
ex-Ukraine.”Even elsewhere in what he
calls “Banderastan,” there won’t be work or aid and “the spiral of poverty”
will become much worse.

At
the same time, “in the former Ukraine, as a result of the low birthrate, the
number of pensioners will grow while the share of young and working age people
will fall.” In addition, he says, “millions of young people will leave to work
as gastarbeiters in the European Union and cease to pay taxes or work in the former
Ukraine.”

To try to pay its bills, Kalashnikov
continues, Kyiv will raise taxes on businesses which will lead the latter to
close and cause foreign companies to shift their trade elsewhere, including to
the ports of Romania. As a result of all this, “even a ‘victorious’ Ukraine
faces the collapse of its economy and the impoverishment of its population.

That
in turn will lead to “new Maidans and revolts and to a rapid overthrow of one
government after another … Separatism will again make an appearance: the
South-East will again try to separate.” And that trend becomes even more likely
because there will be witch hunts against the militants when the Ukrainian army
marches in.

That is what awaits “the new
Ukraine,” Kalashnikov says, “even with the taking of Donetsk and Luhansk and
even if the event of a time of troubles in the Russian Federation.”In such a situation, “Bandera will no longer
help,” regardless of “the banners under which they run.”

Ukraine and the Russian Federation
as well are on their way to becoming “failed states of the impoverished third
world” because they like the other post-Soviet countries are, in Kalashnikov’s
vision of the future, “condemned” to death.

Staunton, July 30 – Commentators in
both Moscow and the West typically view the ideological competition in the post-Soviet
countries as a simple one between pro-Russian and pro-Western groups, but in
the Muslim-majority states, there is a third trend, the pro-Islamic one, and
that is becoming stronger as the others and especially the Western one weakens.

In a major interview on the religious
and political situation in Azerbaijan posted online yesterday, conflict
specialist Arif Yunusov says that in his country, the pro-Russian direction “was
always weak” and the pro-Western one, strong in the 1990s, is weakening given
popular disillusionment about the West (minval.az/news/57492).

He suggests that this
disillusionment has arisen because Western governments have cultivated close ties
with President Ilham Aliyev, and he notes that “there is a law of conflict
studies according to which when an empty space arises in society, other forces
must fill it.” With the West’s influence ebbing, those forces are Islamic.

In the 1990s, the pro-Western trend
dominated, he continues. There were pro-Islamic groups but they were marginal. “No
one took [them] seriously,” even when they were charged with being “pro-Iranian
spies.”

But since becoming president,
Yunusov says, Ilham Aliyev has “cleansed this ‘pro-Western field,’” suppressing
or extremely restricting the activities of parties and civil society and
creating a situation in which “Azerbaijan will become a second Uzbekistan” or
even “a second Turkmenistan.” Without any civil society, “this is a matter of
time.”

At the same time, the rising
generation of Azerbaijanis is more seriously interested in Islam.This has happened because they have concluded
that “We don’t need Russia. The West is hypocritical and does not want anything
besides our oil and gas and closes its eyes to all violations by the
authorities of the norms of democracy.”

Until the last decade,
Yunusov continues, those most attracted toward Islam were “the national
minorities of Azerbaijan, the peoples of the Northern Daghestani group – the Lezgins,
the Avars, and the Tsakhurs.” Most of them were Salafites, something few ethnic
Azerbaijanis are. The Islamic literature these groups had was “from Russia and
in the Russian language.”

Now, however, Islamization and its
radicalization is spreading into the dominant community. If one percent of the
Azerbaijanis were genuinely practicing Muslims 15 years ago, now 22 percent
are, although at present only one percent are radicals. The rest are simply
believers, but more are being radicalized by widespread repression and loss of
faith in the West.

What the regime does not appear to
understand is that Muslims and even Salafites in Azerbaijan are overwhelming
law-abiding and supporters of President Aliyev, Yunusov says, and any failure
by the authorities to make the distinction between them and the tiny minority
of radicals works not to the benefit of the regime or the majority.

Unfortunately, he notes, it
increasingly appears to be the case that “for the authorities, any believer is
dangerous, and especially any believer who is not under control.” But such
control is ultimately impossible. It is not hard to control the clergy in
Christianity, but it is very difficult to control Muslims who don’t have one.

“Closing a church is a heavy blow
for a Christian but closing a mosque although unpleasant is not a tragedy. A
Muslim simply transforms his apartment into a prayer hall,” Yunusov says. The
Soviets closed all mosques and thought they had solved their problem. But
Muslims simply went into their homes. Repeating the Soviet mistake is not a
good idea.

In order to avoid a disaster,
Yunusov says, the most important thing is “to study the situation in order not
to create myths.”There isn’t going to
be an Islamic revolution in Azerbaijan in the next 20 to 25 years, he says,
because there are too many divisions within Islam in that country and there is
no charismatic leader.

The authorities need to understand
that, and they need to understand as well that the role of Islam will
nonetheless grow. Soviet times are not going to come back. And consequently,
the leaders of the post-Soviet Muslim republics need to decide which path they
would like their country to follow: that of Iran, that of the Arab countries or
that of Turkey.

Treating all believers as if they
were all radicals is a dangerous and potentially counter-productive approach
because while “there will not be a purely Islamic revolution as in Iran,” it
cannot be excluded that there could be a popular explosion exploiting Islamic
slogans, all the more so because of declining faith in Western values.

Yunusov says he has noted “one
tendency” which should be a matter of concern.Where “pro-Western parties” have been restricted, “many people suddenly
have gone over to Islam.” People are disappointed: “the Americans are silent,
why?Because of our oil and gas? Then we
don’t need [their] democracy and so on.”

Anti-Americanism is now widespread,
and as a result of that, people are turning to Islam. “An individual cannot
live without faith, and if his faith in the West is shaken, he will choose
Islam,” Yunusov warns in words that apply not just to Azerbaijan but to the
countries of Central Asia as well.

Staunton, July 30 – Commentators in
Moscow and the West ever more frequently draw parallels between Vladimir Putin’s
ideas and actions and those of fascist regimes in the first part of the 20th
century, but few have focused on the fact that one of the Kremlin leader’s
most-cherished ideas, that of the “Russian Spring,” was invented by a Russian
fascist in the 1920s.

In a blog post
today, Pavel Pryannikov corrects that gap, pointing out that “the ‘Russian
Spring’ in fact is not an invention of the present time” but rather that this “synthesis
of fascism, Stalinism, Russian Nationalism and Orthodoxy” was invented by
Aleksandr Kazem-Bek, a leading theoretician of Russian fascism in the 1920s (ttolk.ru/?p=21214).

While the more familiar Eurasian
movement represented the first attempt to “combine corporatist (proto-fascist)
and Bolshevik ideas,” he writes, “far more popular” among White Russians were
the ideas of the Young Russians (“Mladorossy”) whose intellectual leader was
Aleksandr Kazem-Bek.

The descendent of an aristocratic
family which came from Persia to Russia in the early 19th century,
Kazem-Bek was “completely Russified.” He fought in the White Army and in 1920
at the age of 18 fled to Europe. There in 1923, he founded the Young Russia
Union and served as its chief ideologist.

The group in his view was to promote
“a certain new type of totalitarian monarchy, the struggle against masonry and
international capital and also a life ‘full of blood, fire, and self-sacrifice.’”
In Kazem-Bek’s view, Russia should have a regime like Mussolini’s in Italy but
be fully committed to the promotion of “’Russianness.’”

Not only were his ideas derived from
fascism, but Kazem-Bek adopted many fascist external features: a uniform, military
discipline, and a cult of the leader. He insisted that the old Russia had died
because of its corruption and that the Soviet revolution, which a catastrophe,
was also “an apocalypse” which “cleansed” the Russian nation.

Kazem-Bek increasingly viewed Stalin
as an exemplar of the kind of leader he believed Russia should have, and he
insisted that what Russia needed was a combination of Russian autocracy and
Bolshevism or as he put it in one of his slogans, “a tsar and soviets” at one
and the same time.

His ideas attracted support among
some of the Romanovs and other members of the nobility in emigration. But they
and he also attracted the attention of the Soviet secret police, and by the
middle 1930s, Kazem-Bek was assumed by many to be a collaborator with the NKVD,
all the more so when he declared that Young Russia was a “second” Soviet party.

Throughout his émigré career,
Kazem-Bek was withering in criticism of “European values.”He insisted that “Russia is not a competitor
of Europe; it is its successor” and has the right to dispense with anything
harmful in the European tradition.“We
are not only Europeans,” he wrote; “we are Russians. That is something European
chauvinists cannot forgive us for.”

After Mussolini formed his alliance
with Hitler in 1939, Kazem-Bek broke with the Italian government and moved to
France. By that point, his ideology could be described as “Russian Orthodox
Stalinism.”After Germany occupied
France, the Young Russia leader fledto the
United States.

There he began to work with the
Russian Orthodox Church and especially with its Moscow Patriarchate wing. And
in 1957, Kazem-Bek returned to Moscow where he worked in the Moscow
Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, which always had close
ties with the KGB and out of which the current patriarch came.

While in that job, Kazem-Bek
frequently met with Patriarch Aleksii, Metropolitan Nikolay and other senior
churchmen.He lived in Ministry of
Defense housing. When he died in February 1977, he was buried in Peredelkino
and among those who spoke at his funeral was Archpriest Nikolay Gundyayev, the
elder brother of Patriarch Kirill.

At that time, Father Nikolay
Gundyayev said “we must not only remember Kazem-Bek but study him.” Since the
latter’s death, the Moscow Patriarchate has done so. In 2002, on the centenary
of Kazem-Bek’s death, Vsevolod Chaplin was among those who took part in a
conference on the Young Russia leader.

Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov),
who has been a spiritual advisor to Putin, is known to highly value Kazem-Bek’s
ideas, Pryannikov says. And it is probably through him that the ideas of a
Russian fascist of the 1920s have come to the attention and affected the
thinking of the current Kremlin leader.

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Staunton, July 29 – Russia’s Regnum
news agency is reporting something that Moscow’s policies in Ukraine have
helped promote: a Hungarian leader in Transylvania is now demanding “total
national independence” from Romania, a move that could thoroughly destabilize
not only Romania and Hungary but much of Eastern Europe.

Lazlo Tokes, whom Regnum describes
as “one of the leaders of the Hungarians of Transylvania,” said yesterday at a
Hungarian summer school in Băile
Tușnadthat
“the time for a Hungarian autonomy has passed” and that he and his people must
now demand “total national independence” from Romania (regnum.ru/news/polit/1830318.html).

At the same time, Tokes acknowledged
that at present he does “not have any basis for optimism” that this will occur
because of what he called “the colonization” of Transylvania by Romanians, a
Bucharest policy that he said has “converted [the Hungarian community] there
into a diaspora.”

And he said that the Hungarians
could not afford to wait any longer to press for independence. “There is no
time for indefiniteness or political opportunism … Out time is now; it is
necessary to act now ... Only total national independence can bring a rebirth
to the Hungarian community.”

Moreover, Tokes added, the issue of
autonomy for various ethnic groups has become “a key problem for the national
security of Europe and the European Union,” and granting autonomy to ethnic
minorities is “the only path of resolving relations between neighboring
countries.”

For the edification of its readers,
Regnum appended to this report a brief history of the often-troubled and
sometimes explosive history of their region over the last century.

Staunton, July 29 – The Russian
government should reduce the attention it is paying to ethnic Russians and
Russian speakers in the former Soviet republics – a group he calls “Russian
World II” – and expand its attention to ethnic Russians and those who feel at
attachment to Russia elsewhere, a group he calls “Russian World I,” Vladislav
Inozemtsev says

Moscow should do so, the director of
the Moscow Center for Research on Post-Industrial Society, because Russian
World II includes people who are on the defensive and who want more from Moscow
than they can give in return while Russian World I is at the cutting edge of
development and can give far more back than an appeal to them would cost.

In today’s “Vedomosti,” Inozemtsev
notes that many in Moscow now talk about the “Russian world” carelessly and
sloppily, ignoring both its diversity and the costs and benefits for the
Russian Federation in dealing with one or another part of it. That, he argues,
needs to change

Inozemtsev says that “beyond the
borders of Russia there now live up to 35 million people who consider
themselves Russians and almost 60 million who call Russian culture their native
one.” He suggests that it is divided in three major groups: those who left at
the beginning of the 20th century and settled in the US, Canada,
France and Brazil, those who left after the collapse of the USSR, and those who
have remained in new independent states.

Each of these groups has a different
identity and different patterns of behavior, he continues. “The majority” of
the first has been “assimilated their new countries for a long time” and are
“linked with Russia only by symbolic cultural values.” Those in the second
don’t feel a break with Russia but “as a rule” have “a dual identity” and
accept the values of the globalized world.

The first two groups constitute what
Inozemtsev calls “Russian World-I;” the third forms “Russian World II.” The
first “world” arose “as a result of the free choice of more than 6.5 million people.”
Their descendents form significant parts of the population of the major
megalopolises of “the European cultural tradition.”

They have higher pay than the
average of the populations they live among – in the US, the average pay of this
group is 39 percent above the American average – they are well educated – there
are “more than 6,000 ‘Russian’ professors” in US colleges and universities and
“no fewer than 4,000” in European ones – and they have enormous wealth – more
than a trillion US dollars.

In short, “Russian World-I created
outside of Russia an economiy and an intellectual community, completely
commensurate with Russia itself: the technological and industrial production of
the companies under its control significantly exceeds the non-raw materials
sector of the Russian economy, and the share of those ‘representatives of
Russian culture’ living abroad in terms of the scholarly citation index and
number of Nobel Prize winners is higher than among citizens of Russia.”

“Russian World-II” is very
different, Inozemtsev points out. It is “a community of those who in its
majority have turned out to be incapable of leaving the countries formed after
the collapse of the USSR and those who have become ‘professional Russians’ who
do not want to adapt to the life of the new countries.”

It is thus not ahead of Russia, the
Moscow analyst says, but its “rearguard,” and because “its representatives are
forced to defend their cultural values in a relatively hostile milieu, they are
more oriented toward preservation than toward development and thus to national
and not global standards of behavior.”

“Russian World-II looks to the Russian state as the
fulfillment of its aspirations and therefore in part and not without foundation
is viewed in its countries as a fifth column of Russia which still further
complicates its situation.” Indeed, as these nation states strengthen, the
insistence of “Russian World-II” on their differences will “make these people
potential outcasts.”

At
present, Moscow is focused almost exclusively on supporting Russian World-II
and is ignoring Russian World-I.As a
result, “Russia is spending enormous sums on absolutely senseless and in part
harmful measures” and ignoring underlying trends such as the declining share of
ethnic Russians in neighboring countries.

Inozemtsev
says that the Russian government should change course, focusing on Russia World
I rather than Russia World-II. To that end, it should promote “responsible repatriation
and introduce jus sanguinis as the
basis for citizenship. Moreover, it should recognize and accept dual
citizenship.

And
Moscow should recognize that it would “receive a great deal more as a result of
the mass resettlement into Russia of ethnic Russians from the former USSR than
from the support of ‘administered instability’ in the post-Soviet space or from
the inclusion of masses of uneducated migrants who are alien to [Russian]
culture.”

At the same time, Russia could benefit as China has by
reaching out to the wealthy, educated, and technologically advanced “Russian
World-II” seeing it as a means to help transform Russia rather than as is the
case with “Russian World-I” as a break on such development.

Staunton,
July 29 – As the Ukrainian military closes in on Moscow-backed forces in
southeastern Ukraine, Russian commentators are scrambling to explain why the
Russian-speaking population in that region have not flocked to the banners of
the secessionists in Donetsk and Luhansk.

Not
surprisingly, these commentators have not focused on the facts that the
population there overwhelmingly now identifies as Ukrainians and has no
interest in becoming part of the Russian Federation, but what they are saying
says a lot about how Moscow is trying to explain away its own miscalculation
about the support it would receive.

On the basis of a visit to the region,
the blogger whose screen name is Politchanka lists the following reasons:

“The
absence of an authoritative leader among the militants,” including the fact
that most of those in prominent positions are not local but from Russia and
Moscow. Many people there, she says, “do not like Muscovites.”

“The
negative example of the ‘heavenly hundred,’” a memory of the deaths of more
than 100 people in the Maidan which suggests that fighting at the risk of the
loss of one’s own life may be pointless. “In the opinion of the Donetsk people,
only fools fight and die for some idea; smart people survive and vacation in
Crimea.”

“Marauding
and extortion.” People have been put off, Politchanka continues, by the theft
of automobiles by unidentified people and the fact that the authorities are
incapable of doing anything about this.

“The
militants do not defend the cities.” The militants defend their own houses; but
when Ukrainian forces attack the towns, they “depart” for somewhere quiet,
something others cannot do.

“Internal
splits.”“It is no secret,” she writes,
that the leaders are constantly fighting among themselves about who is the most
important. That puts people off.

“The
inability of the militants to maintain normal everyday infrastructure in the
city.” Stores, schools and hospitals are closed, and “people do not see any
prospects.” As a result, “they aren’t joining the ranks of the militants.”

“The
lack of correspondence between the expectations the referendum sparked and
reality.”People in Donetsk and Luhansk
hoped everything would be as it was in Crimea. “No one told them that they
would be bombed and have to sit in basements without having the opportunity
even to eat normally.“Therefore they do
not want to fight.”

Politchanka says that she draws these
conclusions not just from her conversations with people in Donetsk but also from
online discussions. Unless those in charge of the situation in southeastern
Ukraine address these problems, she said, “the level of support in the population”
for the militants will fall geometrically.”